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Literary Review
First Impressions
BY SUCHITRA BEHAL
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The Girl, Sonia Faleiro, Viking, Rs.250.
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WHAT'S in a name?" asked Shakespeare. Nothing much. Except, it is disconcerting to read an entire book where the central character is referred to as "the Girl". The "g" is infuriatingly capitalised, just to make sure that the reader does not confuse this Girl with any other. The storyline is actually pretty simple. Here is this Girl, from a troubled sort of childhood. While she is coming to terms with her life in the somewhat laidback villages of Goa, she comes across a backpacker and naturally loses her heart to him. The rest is predictable. He moves into her house and when it's time for him to leave, he ups and outs without so much as a goodbye. Meanwhile our heroine languishes — not only from unrequited love but also from the dark secret of discovering that she is pregnant. Listless, she pines for the lost lover and stops eating. A few villagers try and coax her — after all she is one of them. But she decides to end her misery. After her death the lost lover returns, consumed with guilt, to live in her house.
To be fair to the author, the descriptions of Goa, the people who inhabit it, their mannerisms and attitudes are
faithfully recorded. But the story falls flat.
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